I've seen this figure before. It ignores the efficiency of the generation of electric power to charge the EV.
A much more realistic figure is 2x.
To get to 2x, you'll need to assume the average BEV is substantially less efficient than a Tesla - that all gasoline is refined at the most efficient refinery - that all ICE cars get Prius mileage - that it takes 0 energy to extract and transmit / ship oil - and probably that the majority of your electricity is coming from coal.
That sounds well off.
How much energy is required to refine fuel suitable for use in an ICE vehicle? Gas and oil fired power plants use a far less refined fuel.
How much energy is required to get the fuel to the vehicle? Gas and oil plants are usually connected via high efficiency transport mechanisms like pipelines rather than ships or road transport.
Vehicle engines are only in the region of 20-35% thermal efficiency but the average across all gas fired plants in the uk is 50% and drops to 42% for oil fired.
I don’t know for sure but only 2x smells to me.
Solar => Grid => Car Battery is less than 10% lost usually. Obviously it can vary a lot - so can oil extraction, shipping and refining...
This means Solar => Grid => Car battery is >5x as efficient as Oil in ground => Pipes => Refinery => Pipes => Gas Station => Car.
Once the energy is in the car, we know the BEV is 5x more efficient.
We also know Solar => Car is SUBSTANTIALLY more efficient at transferring BTUs into the car than the gasoline infrastructure.
In reality, it's probably closer to 10x as efficient than 2x.
You can play this game all day long, depending on which figure you want to land on. Efficiency is nice but the reason it hasn't mattered at all is that it is more about what is readily available and cheaply exploited.
> You can play this game all day long
And you should, to be serious about CO2 emissions reduction. Otherwise, we're all just fooling ourselves.
If the BEV is running with their 2kw heating turned up full blast in addition to running down the road, and there was a heat loss of around 2-5% while charging the car then We’re still at around 3x more efficient in the BEV vs the ICE.
Then there’s the electricity supply which ranges from 0 refinement loss and 50% thermal efficiency (natural gas fired power plant) to NaN% for nuclear, wind and solar.
A BEV charging right this minute in the UK is consuming energy originating from 25% gas, 25% nuclear, 25% wind, 5% solar (its 6:30pm).
It could be more than 5x when you compare with ICE fuel supply / refinement / storage / delivery.
